Playing a Video Game Could Cut the Risk of Dementia by 48%, Suggests a New Study

in Neuroscience, Video Games | August 9th, 2016

Video games, the world has come to real­ize, can do good. Twen­ty or thir­ty years ago, peo­ple had a hard­er time accept­ing this, much to the frus­tra­tion of dai­ly-gam­ing young­sters such as myself. I remem­ber decid­ing, for a school sci­ence project, to demon­strate that video games improve “hand-eye coor­di­na­tion,” the go-to ben­e­fit in those days to explain why they weren’t all bad. But as our under­stand­ing of video games has become more sophis­ti­cat­ed, as have video games them­selves, it’s become clear that we can engi­neer them to improve much more about our­selves than that.

The New York­er’s Dan Hur­ley recent­ly wrote about find­ings from a study called Advanced Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Inde­pen­dent and Vital Elder­ly (ACTIVE), which began with three thou­sand par­tic­i­pants back in 1998. “The par­tic­i­pants, who had an aver­age age of 73.6 at the begin­ning of the tri­al, were ran­dom­ly divid­ed into four groups. The first group, which served as con­trol, received no brain train­ing at all. The next two were giv­en ten hours of class­room instruc­tion on how to improve mem­o­ry or rea­son­ing. The last group per­formed some­thing called speed-of-pro­cess­ing train­ing” by play­ing a kind of video game for ten hour-long ses­sions spread over five weeks.

A decade into the study, some of the par­tic­i­pants received extra train­ing. 14 per­cent of the group who received no train­ing met the cri­te­ria for demen­tia, 12.1 per­cent did in the group who received speed-of-pro­cess­ing train­ing, and only 8.2 per­cent did in the group who received all pos­si­ble train­ing. “In all, the researchers cal­cu­lat­ed, those who com­plet­ed at least some of these boost­er ses­sions were forty-eight-per-cent less like­ly to be diag­nosed with demen­tia after ten years than their peers in the con­trol group.”

Intrigu­ing find­ings, and ones that have set off a good deal of media cov­er­age. What sort of video game did ACTIVE use to get these results? The Wall Street Jour­nal’s Sumathi Red­dy reports that “the exer­cise used in the study was devel­oped by researchers but acquired by Posit Sci­ence, of San Fran­cis­co, in 2007,” who have gone on to mar­ket a ver­sion of it called Dou­ble Deci­sion. In it, the play­er “must iden­ti­fy an object at the cen­ter of their gaze and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly iden­ti­fy an object in the periph­ery,” like cars, signs, and oth­er objects on a vari­ety of land­scapes. “As play­ers get cor­rect answers, the pre­sen­ta­tion time speeds up, dis­trac­tors are intro­duced and the tar­gets become more dif­fi­cult to dif­fer­en­ti­ate.”

You can see that game in action, and learn a lit­tle more about the study, in the Wall Street Jour­nal video above. Effec­tive brain-train­ing video games remain in their infan­cy (and a few of the arti­cles about ACTIVE’s find­ings fail to men­tion Lumos Labs’ $2 mil­lion pay­ment to the gov­ern­ment to set­tle charges that the com­pa­ny false­ly claimed that their games could stave off demen­tia) but if the ones that work can har­ness the addic­tive pow­er of an Angry Birds or a Can­dy Crush, we must pre­pare our­selves for a sharp gen­er­a­tion of senior cit­i­zens indeed.

Note: The Advanced Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Inde­pen­dent and Vital Elder­ly (ACTIVE) study was fund­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging (NIA) and the Nation­al Insti­tute of Nurs­ing Research (NINR), both part of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Becom­ing Bilin­gual Can Give Your Brain a Boost: What Recent Research Has to Say

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Malcolm Gladwell Asks Hard Questions about Money & Meritocracy in American Higher Education: Stream 3 Episodes of His New Podcast

in Education, Life, Podcasts | August 9th, 2016

Image by Kris Krüg, via Flickr Com­mons

Mal­colm Gladwell’s Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry pod­cast kicked off this sum­mer and in his very first episode, he took on the ques­tion of how women have bro­ken into male-dom­i­nat­ed fields, and the many rea­sons that so often hasn’t hap­pened. Hav­ing set this tone, Glad­well asks in a more recent inquiry—a three-part series span­ning Episodes 4 through 7—a sim­i­lar ques­tion about what we might call mer­i­toc­ra­cy in edu­ca­tion, a val­ue fun­da­men­tal to lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, how­ev­er that’s inter­pret­ed. As Glad­well puts it in “Car­los Doesn’t Remem­ber,” “This is what civ­i­lized soci­eties are sup­posed to do: to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to make the most of their abil­i­ty. So that if you’re born poor, you can move up. If you work hard, you can improve your life.”

Over some sen­ti­men­tal, home­spun orches­tra­tion, Glad­well points out that Amer­i­cans have told our­selves that this is our birthright, “that every kid can become pres­i­dent.” We have seen our­selves this way despite the fact that at the country’s ori­gin, high­er offices were sole­ly the prop­er­ty of prop­er­tied men, a small minor­i­ty even then. Lest we for­get, for all their good inten­tions, Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack and lat­er col­lec­tion, “The Way to Wealth,” were writ­ten as satires, “relent­less­ly scathing social and polit­i­cal com­men­tary,” writes Jill Lep­ore, that mock wish­ful think­ing and exag­ger­at­ed ambi­tion even as they offer help­ful hints for orga­nized, dili­gent liv­ing. Amer­i­cans, the more cyn­i­cal of us might think, have always believed impos­si­ble things, and the myth of mer­i­toc­ra­cy is one of them.

But Glad­well, skim­ming past the cul­tur­al his­to­ry, wants to gen­uine­ly ask the ques­tion, “is it true? Is the sys­tem geared to serve the poor smart kid, or the rich smart kid?” Apart from our beliefs and polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies, what can we real­ly say about what he calls, in eco­nom­ics terms, “the rate of cap­i­tal­iza­tion” in the U.S.? This num­ber, Glad­well explains, mea­sures “the per­cent­age of peo­ple in any group who are able to reach their poten­tial.” Bet­ter than “its GDP, or its growth rate, or its per-capi­ta income,” a society’s cap­i­tal­iza­tion rate, he says, allows us to judge “how suc­cess­ful and just” a coun­try is—and in the case of the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar, how much it lives up to its ideals.

The first episode in the series (Episode 4 of the pod­cast, stream it above) intro­duces us to Gladwell’s first sub­ject, Car­los, a very bright high school stu­dent in Los Ange­les, and Eric Eis­ner, a retired enter­tain­ment lawyer who devotes his time to scout­ing out tal­ent­ed kids from low income fam­i­lies and help­ing them get into pri­vate schools. Eis­ner did exact­ly that for Car­los, find­ing him a place in an upscale pri­vate Brent­wood school in the fifth grade. Ear­ly in Gladwell’s inter­view with Car­los, the ques­tion of what James Heck­man at Boston Review iden­ti­fies as the “non-cog­ni­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics” that inhib­it social suc­cess comes up. These are as often “phys­i­cal and men­tal health” and the soft skills of social inter­ac­tion as they are access to some­thing as seem­ing­ly mun­dane as a pair of ten­nis shoes that fit.

Car­los, a “real­ly, real­ly gift­ed kid,” Glad­well reit­er­ates, can­not make it into and through the com­pli­cat­ed social sys­tem of pri­vate school with­out Eis­ner, who bought him new ten­nis shoes, and who pro­vides oth­er mate­r­i­al and social forms of sup­port for the stu­dents he men­tors. Stu­dents like Car­los, Glad­well argues, need not only men­tors, but patrons in the mold of an ancient Roman patri­cian: “not just any advo­cate: a high-pow­ered guy with lots of con­nec­tions, who can get you in and watch over you.” The key to class mobil­i­ty, in oth­er words, lies with the arbi­trary noblesse oblige of those who have already made it, gen­er­al­ly with some con­sid­er­able advan­tages of their own. The remain­der of the episode explores the obvi­ous and non-obvi­ous prob­lems with this mod­ern-day patron­age sys­tem.

In “Food Fight,” the next part of the mini-series on “cap­i­tal­iza­tion,” Glad­well and his col­leagues open the door on the world of pres­ti­gious lib­er­al arts col­leges’ din­ing ser­vices, start­ing at Bow­doin Col­lege in Maine, a place where the food ser­vices are “in a whole dif­fer­ent class.” Bowdoin’s excel­lent food, Glad­well argues, rep­re­sents a “moral prob­lem.” To help us under­stand, he makes a direct com­par­i­son with Bowdoin’s elite com­peti­tor, Vas­sar Col­lege, whose stu­dent din­ing is more in line with what most of us expe­ri­enced at col­lege; in one student’s under­stat­ed phrase, there’s “room for improve­ment.” What the food com­par­i­son illus­trates is this: when many elite insti­tu­tions dou­bled their finan­cial aid bud­gets a decade or so ago to increase enroll­ment of low-income stu­dents, oth­er bud­get lines, so Vassar’s pres­i­dent claims, took such a hit that food, facil­i­ties, and oth­er ser­vices suf­fered.

Vassar’s cur­rent pres­i­dent trans­formed the stu­dent body from pri­mar­i­ly full-tuition-pay­ing stu­dents to pri­mar­i­ly stu­dents “who pay very lit­tle.” The egal­i­tar­i­an move means the col­lege must lean too heav­i­ly on its endow­ment and on the pay­ing stu­dents. Glad­well doesn’t delve into what we’ve also been hear­ing about for at least the last decade: as insti­tu­tions like Vas­sar accept and fund increas­ing num­bers of low-income stu­dents, oth­er schools charged legal­ly with pro­vid­ing for the pub­lic good, like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem, have raised tuition to lev­els unaf­ford­able to thou­sands of prospec­tive stu­dents.

Col­leges across the coun­try may have raised tuition rates to their cur­rent astro­nom­i­cal lev­els in part to bet­ter fund poor­er appli­cants, but they have also faced stiff crit­i­cism for spend­ing huge amounts on ath­let­ics, build­ing projects, and exor­bi­tant admin­is­tra­tive salaries. The food com­par­i­son presents us with an either/or sce­nario, but the moral prob­lem inhab­its a much gray­er real­i­ty than Glad­well acknowl­edges. Like­wise, in the sto­ry of Car­los, we come to under­stand why smart kids from poor neigh­bor­hoods face so many imped­i­ments once they arrive at elite insti­tu­tions. But we don’t hear about why so many poor kids fail to achieve at all due to what what Heck­man calls “the prin­ci­ple source of inequal­i­ty today”—children born into pover­ty begin life at a severe dis­ad­van­tage from the very start, lead­ing to social divi­sions of the “skilled and unskilled” even in ear­ly child­hood.

We do get a broad­er pic­ture in the final episode in the series, “My Lit­tle Hun­dred Mil­lions,” in which Glad­well looks into anoth­er moral prob­lem: In the sto­ry of Hen­ry Rowan, who in the ear­ly ‘90s donat­ed $100 mil­lion to a tiny uni­ver­si­ty in New Jer­sey, we see a stark con­trast to the way most phil­an­thropists oper­ate, almost as a rule mak­ing their gen­er­ous gifts to elite, already wealthy schools like Har­vard, Stan­ford, and Yale. This sys­tem of phil­an­thropy per­pet­u­ates inequal­i­ty in high­er edu­ca­tion and keeps elite insti­tu­tions elite, even as—in places like Vassar—it gives them the reserve cap­i­tal they need to fund low­er-income stu­dents. Like any com­plex insti­tu­tion­al sys­tem with a long, tan­gled his­to­ry of exclu­sion and priv­i­lege, high­er edu­ca­tion in the U.S. offers us a very good mod­el for study­ing inequal­i­ty.

To hear Glad­well’s full assess­ment of mer­i­toc­ra­cy or “cap­i­tal­iza­tion,” you’ll need to lis­ten to the full series as it builds on each exam­ple to make its larg­er point. Each episode’s web­page also includes links to ref­er­ence doc­u­ments and fea­tured books so that you can con­tin­ue the inves­ti­ga­tion on your own, cor­rect­ing for the podcast’s blind spots and bias­es. What Gladwell’s series does well, as do many of his pop soci­o­log­i­cal best­sellers, is give us con­crete exam­ples that run up against many of our abstract pre­con­cep­tions. It’s an inter­est­ing approach—structuring an extend­ed look at excep­tion­al­ism and its prob­lems around three excep­tion­al cas­es. But it is these cas­es, with all their com­pli­ca­tions and com­plex­i­ty, that often get lost in over-gen­er­al­ized dis­cus­sions about high­er edu­ca­tion and the myths and real­i­ties of social mobil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well Has Launched a New Pod­cast, Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry: Hear the First Episode

Mal­colm Glad­well: Tax­es Were High and Life Was Just Fine

Mal­colm Glad­well: What We Can Learn from Spaghet­ti Sauce

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Philosophy of Bruce Lee Gets Explored in a New Podcast

in Philosophy | August 8th, 2016

Years ago, we fea­tured a won­der­ful clip show­ing Bruce Lee, only 24 years old, audi­tion­ing for a part in the 1960s TV show, “The Green Hor­net.” In the clip, Lee puts on a remark­able dis­play of his mar­tial arts skills, all while explain­ing the phi­los­o­phy that guides his moves. The actor, who stud­ied phi­los­o­phy in col­lege, looks at the cam­era and explains the rela­tion­ship between kung fu and a glass of water. He says: “water is the soft­est sub­stance in the world,… but yet it can pen­e­trate the hard­est rock or any­thing, gran­ite, you name it. So, every kung fu man is try­ing to do that,… to be soft like water, and flex­i­ble and adapt itself to the oppo­nent.”

That’s a good prompt to tell you about the brand new pod­cast that explores the phi­los­o­phy of Bruce Lee, who died in 1973. Launched by his daugh­ter Shan­non Lee, each episode promis­es to “dig deep into Bruce’s phi­los­o­phy to pro­vide guid­ance and action on cul­ti­vat­ing your truest self.” As the pod­cast moves along, it will help you find wis­dom in Lee’s pro­nounce­ments, like: “Emp­ty your mind, be form­less, shape­less like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bot­tle, it becomes the bot­tle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” By now, you’re start­ing to see, Lee had a thing for water.

You can get the pod­cast via iTunes and Stitch­er. Below, stream one of the first episodes that delves into his phi­los­o­phy.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee’s Only Sur­viv­ing TV Inter­view, 1971: Lost and Now Found

Kung Fu & Mar­tial Arts Movies Online

Maya Angelou Reads Her Poem, “The Human Family,” in New iPhone Ad Released for the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony

in Apple, Poetry, Sports, Technology | August 8th, 2016

It’s always demor­al­iz­ing when a favorite song—Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” or the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar” come to mind—is co-opt­ed to sell soda or Caribbean cruis­es.

Poet­ry, how­ev­er? I’m not ungrate­ful to have some smug­gled into my day by a com­mer­cial car­ri­er whose agen­da is some­how less sus­pect. Would that we lived in a world where the poet­ry of Ted Hugh­es or Emi­ly Dick­in­son might be seen as hav­ing the pow­er to sell view­ers on a par­tic­u­lar brand of piz­za or auto­mo­bile.

It almost seems we do, giv­en the response to “The Human Fam­i­ly,” a new Apple spot show­cas­ing the iPhone’s cam­era capa­bil­i­ties with a slideshow of por­traits sub­mit­ted by users the world round. The images—already captivating—are made more so by the unmis­take­able voice of the late Maya Angelou, whose poem, “The Human Fam­i­ly,” sup­plies both title and inspi­ra­tion.

It’s very stir­ring, as befits an ad debut­ing dur­ing the Olympics’ open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. (I weep that the Super Bowl failed to make the Dr. Angelou com­mer­cial par­o­dies of yore a real­i­ty.)

The one-minute spot shaves a bit off the poem, but per­haps it is okay to leave a bit behind as a reward for view­ers moved to look it up on their own.

The com­plete text is here. Below, find a non-Apple-spon­sored video that match­es the same nar­ra­tion to a slideshow fea­tur­ing the author at var­i­ous stages of life. The read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Adweek

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Music Video & Hear Tracks From Maya Angelou’s Posthu­mous Hip-Hop Album, Caged Bird Songs

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Stream a Massive Collection of Indie, Noise Industrial Mixtapes from the 80s and 90s

in Music | August 5th, 2016

They’ll nev­er be worth as much as the alleged box of first edi­tion Super­man comics left in my father’s room when he shipped out to sea, alleged­ly giv­en to the dump by his moth­er, though she for­ev­er denied it; but those over­stuffed box­es full of cheap mix­tapes from the late 80s and 90s in my clos­et have to be worth some­thing, right? If only to the inter­net… the Inter­net Archive, a more spe­cif­ic place, and yes, it’s the one that hosts the Way­back Machine, pre­serv­er of web­pages no one updates or, real­ly, vis­its any­more.

But this is not a sad sto­ry about what hap­pened to Web 1.0! But a hap­py one about where your mix­tapes will go, because they are need­ed. Just as a recent gen­er­a­tion decid­ed to bypass the six­ties and go back to the sources of Hen­drix and CSNY so future hip­sters of today ignore oughties retreads and return to the world just before the inter­net. They go full anti­quar­i­an with it, with authen­tic peri­od cos­tumes and peri­od-era equip­ment, which means they often sound ter­ri­ble. They need cas­settes to get it right.

The cas­sette has already made its way back in a big way, rein­tro­duc­ing the sound of ear­ly syn­th­pop, indus­tri­al music, DIY indie rock, and a genre called “tape exper­i­men­ta­tion” that encom­pass­es any­thing from avant-garde musique con­crète to the lat­est pro­duc­tion of spliced togeth­er cas­sette tape. The sound of decay­ing tape—a soup of hiss and muf­fled, warped, out-of-tune copies of songs—birthed dark, sludgy met­al and per­fect­ly cap­tured the sound­tracks of hor­ror movies. And, imper­fect­ly, the sound of every­thing else. These were “the days when the audio cas­sette was the stan­dard method of music shar­ing… gen­er­al­ly the mid-eight­ies through ear­ly-nineties,” points out The Noise-Arch Archive, which hosts just such a col­lec­tion, on just such a (dig­i­tized) medi­um. 30 gigs of tape hiss.

One needs a reli­able guide like, say, Tom Waits, to under­stand how weird depres­sion-era music was. This archive makes sig­nif­i­cant head­way in con­vey­ing the same infor­ma­tion about the Bush (the first) and Clin­ton (the first) years. One need only lis­ten to Church of the Tapes­lice / Time­s­plice at the top, as much as that’s pos­si­ble, to get a fla­vor of how. It’s a mélange of Frank Zap­pa-like sound col­lage, Res­i­dents-like sar­don­ic absur­di­ty, Devo-like black humor, and free-form-the-DJ-is-real­ly-stoned-lev­el goofi­ness you’ve heard at least once late night on your col­lege radio sta­tion. But they aren’t all this off-putting, and they aren’t all this approach­able either.

Psy­cho­ma­nia, fur­ther up, lives up to its name. It opens inno­cent­ly enough, with some sort of non­de­script­ly trib­al dit­ty, lilt­ing, if unset­tling. Then the mix shifts into full gial­lo mode, the loud, pun­ish­ing synths and descend­ing har­monies of doom that com­prise the scores of “Spaghet­ti Slash­ers.” Expect the obscure of the obscure in every tape in this col­lec­tion. “Much of this mate­r­i­al defies cat­e­go­ry,” Noise-Arch advis­es, “and has there­fore not been giv­en one.” Much of it sounds like some­thing you might rec­og­nize, only a few uncan­ny removes from your point of ref­er­ence.

The col­lec­tion above—its bare­ly leg­i­ble cov­er describes a com­pi­la­tion from “Fetus Pro­duc­tions” in Australia—opens with some real­ly off-kil­ter elec­tro-lounge music and pro­gress­es into a full-on syn­th­pop opera. None of this music, obvi­ous­ly, should be missed. Nor the music stored in impor­tant archives cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing my clos­et. I’ll nev­er sell it. Because who wants a bunch of worn-out crap­py plas­tic tapes? It’s what’s on them that we need to pre­serve. Even the hard-to-love slack­er non­sense of I Was a Teenage Com­mu­nist (The Secret Con­fes­sions of Oliv­er North).  Enter The Noise-Arch Archive here.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Great Mix­tapes Richard Lin­klater Cre­at­ed to Psych Up the Actors in Dazed and Con­fused and Every­body Wants Some!!

Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers: Hear 90 Hours of Back­ground Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Hey­day

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Playing Golf on LSD With Hunter S. Thompson: Esquire Editor Remembers the Oddest Game of Golf

in Sports | August 5th, 2016

At 3:33 one morn­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2005, Hunter S. Thomp­son rang up Bill Mur­ray. “I’ve invent­ed a new sport,” declared the writer to the actor. “It’s called Shot­gun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing.” How do you play it? Why, you “shoot your oppo­nen­t’s high-fly­ing golf ball out of the air with a fine­ly-tuned 12-gauge shot­gun, thus pre­vent­ing him (your oppo­nent) from loft­ing a 9‑iron approach shot onto a dis­tant ‘green’ and mak­ing a ‘hole in one.’ ”

Mur­ray, a known night owl and avid golfer in touch with his own Thomp­son­ian side at least since por­tray­ing him in 1980’s Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam, seemed pleased enough with the idea. Alas, Shot­gun Golf nev­er had the chance to become Amer­i­ca’s new nation­al pas­time; Thomp­son’s expla­na­tion of it came in the very last col­umn he wrote before his death at the age of 67. Giv­en the, shall we say, col­or­ful life he lived and the drug-and-drink reg­i­men that fueled it to the end, mak­ing it to late mid­dle age counts as one of his accom­plish­ments in itself.

We’ll nev­er know what exact cock­tail of sub­stances inspired Thomp­son to come up with Shot­gun Golf in the first place, but it came at the end of a long per­son­al his­to­ry of mix­ing drugs and clubs. Esquire recent­ly ran an excerpt from The Acci­den­tal Life, its for­mer edi­tor Ter­ry McDonel­l’s new mem­oir, about a ses­sion of “acid golf” with George Plimp­ton and the man who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. No soon­er did they arrive at the Aspen Golf Club (and goose sanc­tu­ary) than Thomp­son brought out the essen­tial pre-game sup­ple­ment: “ ‘Here,’ Hunter said, hold­ing out three white tabs of blot­ter paper with an unfa­mil­iar red sym­bol on them. ‘Eat these.’ ”

Before long, McDon­nell feels him­self “peace­ful­ly soar­ing.” Then the ses­sion, which also involves a fair bit of drink­ing, comes down to a high-stakes putt: “We were all in for $1,000, Hunter said.” Thomp­son, despite painstak­ing min­utes spent lin­ing it up, “missed the putt by about a foot and, charg­ing after it, let out a howl as he winged his put­ter into the pond. The geese start­ed honk­ing and Hunter ran back to the cart, pulled the 12-gauge from his golf bag and fired over the geese, and they lift­ed off the pond like a sparkling cloud of gray and white feath­ers.”

“It occurred to me as I watched the glit­ter blend into the fad­ing sky,’ writes McDon­nell, “that hav­ing a sto­ry to tell about acid golf with Hunter and George was prob­a­bly good for my career.” You can watch a video on that sto­ry at the top of the post. And what, final­ly, have we learned from it? In the com­pa­ny of Hunter S. Thomp­son, even plain old acid golf called for a shot­gun.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Werner Herzog Narrates Pokémon Go: Imagines It as a Murderous Metaphor for the Battle to Survive

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Games | August 5th, 2016

Like film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog, I have exist­ed in near total igno­rance of Poké­mon Go, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty game that pur­ports to get play­ers on their feet and out in the real world.

With­out a smartphone—an item Wern­er refus­es to own for “cul­tur­al reasons”—one can­not par­tic­i­pate.

I have a smart­phone, but my data plan is so small, I’m afraid I’d blow it all in hot pur­suit of a Bul­basaur, what­ev­er the hell that is. My kids nev­er got into Poké­mon and thus, nei­ther did I. Reports that some car­toon was caus­ing seizures in Japan­ese child view­ers was my intro­duc­tion to the world of Poké­mon. Epilep­sy runs in the fam­i­ly. It wasn’t hard for me to steer clear.

I have noticed a large num­ber of Face­book friends prais­ing the game’s non-vir­tu­al aspects. Their chil­dren are emerg­ing into the light, gam­bol­ing through parks and pub­lic squares, find­ing com­mon ground with neigh­bors and oth­er play­ers.

Does Wern­er have Face­book friends?

I think we all know the answer to that.

We both got an unex­pect­ed crash course in Poké­mon Go, when Wern­er was inter­viewed by The Verge’s Emi­ly Yoshi­da about his online Mas­ter­Class in film­mak­ing and Lo and Behold, his new doc­u­men­tary about the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

Yoshi­da explained the Poké­mon Go phe­nom­e­non to him thus­ly:

It’s basi­cal­ly the first main­stream aug­ment­ed real­i­ty pro­gram. It’s a game where the entire world is mapped and you walk around with the GPS on your phone. You walk around in the real world and can catch these lit­tle mon­sters and col­lect them. And every­body is play­ing it.

Her­zog was most inter­est­ed in what hap­pens when the Poké­mon appear in the vir­tu­al crosshairs:

When two per­sons in search of a Poké­mon clash at the cor­ner of Sun­set and San Vicente is there vio­lence? Is there mur­der?… Do they bite each oth­er’s hands? Do they punch each oth­er?

He declined Yoshida’s offer to bor­row her cell phone in order to try the game out, at which point Slate’s Daniel Hub­bard and For­rest Wick­man stepped in, cut­ting togeth­er footage of the game and the ani­mat­ed series with some of the most mem­o­rable nar­ra­tion from Herzog’s oevure.

Seen through the above lens, Poké­mon Go becomes a reflec­tion of our ongo­ing bat­tle for sur­vival, rife with for­ni­ca­tion, asphyx­i­a­tion, and rot. The trees and birds are in mis­ery, and the pen­guins are insane.

It almost makes me want to play! Though in truth, I think anoth­er of Herzog’s activ­i­ties —ven­tur­ing into the coun­try­side “to look a chick­en in the eye with great intensity”—is more my speed.

Read the com­plete inter­view on The Verge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Start Your Day with Wern­er Her­zog Inspi­ra­tional Posters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Carl Jung Explains Why His Famous Friendship with Sigmund Freud Fell Apart in Rare 1959 Audio

in History, Psychology | August 4th, 2016

Sig­mund Freud and Carl Jung—leg­endary friends and col­leagues, then rivals—“were not good for one anoth­er,” wrote Lionel Trilling in a 1974 review of their new­ly-pub­lished cor­re­spon­dence. Their friend­ship, begun in 1907, “made them sus­cep­ti­ble to false atti­tudes and ambigu­ous tones.” Freud first thought of Jung as “the Joshua to his Moses,” his “heir” and “suc­ces­sor and crown prince.” Twen­ty years his mentor’s junior, Jung swore feal­ty to Freud’s pro­gram, hop­ing not to dis­ap­point the man. But this was inevitable.

Freud’s harsh 1913 break-up let­ter to his for­mer dis­ci­ple shows us the lim­its of the Vien­nese doctor’s kind­ness as he recounts the “lin­ger­ing effect of past dis­ap­point­ments” that has sev­ered his “emo­tion­al tie” with Jung. Forty-six years lat­er, and twen­ty years after Freud’s death, Jung remained tac­i­turn about the per­son­al details of their rela­tion­ship. In the 1959 inter­view above, Jung tells us how their “long and pen­e­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tions” began after he sent Freud a book he’d writ­ten on schiz­o­phre­nia. In answer to the ques­tion, “what kind of man was Freud?” Jung gives us only a hint of his mentor’s obsti­na­cy, say­ing he “soon dis­cov­ered that when [Freud] had thought some­thing, then it was set­tled.”

As for him­self, Jung says he “was doubt­ing all the time,” a con­se­quence of his devot­ed study of Kant, where Freud “had no philo­soph­i­cal edu­ca­tion.” Their method­olog­i­cal impasse only grew as Jung pur­sued the sym­bol­ic depths of the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, and their the­o­ries began to diverge on almost meta­phys­i­cal grounds. And yet, Jung cred­its their tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship for inspir­ing his “lat­er inves­ti­ga­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal types.” Dur­ing their acquain­tance, the two ana­lyzed each oth­er fre­quent­ly; asked about “the sig­nif­i­cant fea­tures of Freud’s dreams,” Jung refus­es to answer on the grounds of keep­ing “pro­fes­sion­al secrets.”

Jung died two years after this inter­view, and in 1970 the Freud and Jung fam­i­lies made what Trilling called “the enlight­ened deci­sion” to pub­lish their cor­re­spon­dence togeth­er in one vol­ume, in Ger­man and Eng­lish. You’ll hear Jung above dis­cuss his unwill­ing­ness to release the let­ters before his death. At the very end of the short inter­view he talks more explic­it­ly about his break with Freud. While Freud may have felt let down by his one­time dis­ci­ple, Jung express­es his own dis­ap­point­ment with Freud’s “pure­ly per­son­al approach and his dis­re­gard of the his­tor­i­cal con­di­tions of man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Famous Let­ter Where Freud Breaks His Rela­tion­ship with Jung (1913)

Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Man­u­script The Red Book: A Whis­pered Intro­duc­tion

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Book Readers Live Longer Lives, According to New Study from Yale University

in Books, Health | August 4th, 2016

Image by Johannes Jans­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What are the keys to longevi­ty? If you ask Dan Buet­tner, the author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Liv­ing Longer From the Peo­ple Who’ve Lived the Longest, he’d list nine key fac­tors. They range from slow down and don’t stress out, to have a clear pur­pose in life, to eat main­ly plant based foods and put fam­i­ly first. Nowhere on his list, how­ev­er, does he sug­gest sit­ting down and read­ing good books.

And yet a new study by researchers at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Pub­lic Health indi­cates that peo­ple who read books (but not so much mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers) live two years longer, on aver­age, than those who don’t read at all. Bec­ca R. Levy, a pro­fes­sor of epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Yale, is quot­ed in The New York Times as say­ing, “Peo­ple who report as lit­tle as a half-hour a day of book read­ing had a sig­nif­i­cant sur­vival advan­tage over those who did not read.” “And the sur­vival advan­tage remained after adjust­ing for wealth, edu­ca­tion, cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and many oth­er vari­ables.” Pre­cise­ly how book read­ing con­tributes to increased longevi­ty is not spelled out. You can read the abstract for the new study here.

via NYTimes

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Live to Be 100 and Beyond: 9 Diet & Lifestyle Tips

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Artist Ai Weiwei Gives the Finger to Symbols of Authority Around the World

in Art | August 4th, 2016

Artist Ai Wei­wei has been giv­ing the fin­ger to author­i­ty for most of his career in a fig­u­ra­tive sense, butting heads with Chi­nese cen­sors, and refus­ing to tame his mes­sage even after sev­er­al arrests, bans, and beat­ings. Fight­ing has been with him his entire life: his father, Ai Qing, a renowned poet, was declared a “class ene­my” in 1967 and sent to a forced labor camp, along with his fam­i­ly, when Ai Wei­wei was only 10 years old.

His pho­tog­ra­phy series, Study of Per­spec­tive (1995 to 2003)–which you can see in the video above–is a lit­er­al flip­ping of the bird to sym­bols of pow­er across the globe, from the White House to a nest of CCTV cam­eras, and makes explic­it the artist’s non-vio­lent form of dis­sent.

The video above is a mini-doc made for the first major Ai Wei­wei ret­ro­spec­tive in Greece, at The Muse­um of Cycladic Art, run­ning through Octo­ber 30, 2016. (It’s also his first exhi­bi­tion in an arche­o­log­i­cal muse­um.) Along with show­ing the artist giv­ing the fin­ger to author­i­ty, it high­lights Ai Weiwei’s recent works on the refugee cri­sis.

“The whole sit­u­a­tion is so des­per­ate,” he says, “because you don’t see human con­nec­tions in those events. It’s com­plete­ly cut off.”

In the past, Ai Wei­wei has wrapped the pil­lars of a Ger­man con­cert hall in life vests, cov­ered pre­vi­ous sculp­tures with gold­en ther­mal blan­kets, recre­at­ed the famous pho­to of the drowned Syr­i­an child on the shore, and has shut down his own shows over anti-refugee laws in Europe.

At a 2015 march in Lon­don, Ai Wei­wei and fel­low artist Anish Kapoor flipped the bird over on Kapoor’s Insta­gram account as an invi­ta­tion to the aware­ness-rais­ing protest. (They also told fel­low walk­ers to bring a sin­gle blan­ket as a sym­bol of the refugees’ sit­u­a­tion.)

The sparse nar­ra­tion by the artist may sound fatal­is­tic in the video, but he’s a man who knows the pow­er of protest. But he also knows the con­se­quences.

“What I have always been involved in is human rights,” he says. “The human strug­gle and the free­dom of speech. Those val­ues are not giv­en by any­body. It always comes through fight­ing and strug­gle. Because some­body has to defend it. And also, if just one per­son defends it, it ben­e­fits every­body.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

The His­to­ry of the Seem­ing­ly Impos­si­ble Chi­nese Type­writer

The Syr­i­an Con­flict & The Euro­pean Refugee Cri­sis Explained in an Ani­mat­ed Primer

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.